Unexpected
by jayjaybee
Summary: Set after 2.03. Patsy/Delia. Now concluded.
1. A florist?

"Was it Medusa where you cut off one head and two grow back in its place?" Delia's taking the news of Mr Tracy's departure as only Delia can. "It's the same with surgeons. Cut off one beastly head and half a dozen grow back, worse than before."

"Medusa's the snakes," Patsy says, playing idly with the rim of her coffee cup. "Hydra has the heads."

"You knew what I meant," Delia grins at her irrepressibly. "And besides, they're so snake-like, snake-ish, some of those surgeons, it suits them rather well."

It does something to Patsy, that grin, something to her insides, and usually, she can't help but return it. Not today though. Instead, she says, quietly, "I went for a job interview."

"When? Pats, why ever didn't you say?"

"I'm saying now. Last week."

"In a different hospital? But why, Pats? Not because of Mr Tracy?"

Patsy takes a deep breath. Whatever answer Delia's expecting, it won't be what she's about to hear. "In a florist's. In Chelsea."

"You did _what?"_ Somehow the mug that Delia slams down on the table doesn't shatter into a million pieces.

Patsy winces almost imperceptibly, doesn't answer. Delia heard her clearly enough, and she's not saying it again. "I didn't get it," she says instead. "They wanted someone with more experience. Apparently arranging flowers in vases for invalids didn't really cut it..."

She trails off, offers a weak smile and a shrug. Delia's looking at her, horrified. That look does something to Patsy's insides, too. Breaks her heart, possibly.

"A florist's? In _Chelsea?"_

* * *

This wasn't the way their first proper conversation since she got back was supposed to go.

If being home for a week achieved anything, it was to make it abundantly clear to Delia how she felt.

She'd known it pretty much well enough before she left for a week in Wales. But a week at home - with her mother and father, the dog and the cat, her aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and great aunts - had been a week of enduring a physical ache for someone who was not there, an ache of longing, an ache of - let's not be coy - lust, an ache of - let's be frank - love.

The question, of course, was whether that longing, that lust, that love, even, was requited or not. When she thought about it, sometimes, she was sure it was: the way Patsy looked at her, sometimes, when she thought Delia was not aware of it; the way her face lit up when Delia came in the room; the way she flushed when Delia flirted. At other times, though, she was less certain. There had been moments, days, weeks sometimes, when Patsy closed down on her, when Patsy's smiles were stilted, her confidences restricted. But then again, knowing Patsy as she did, Delia knew that wasn't exactly evidence _against_ her feeling the same. It wasn't entirely evidence _for_ it, either, but it certainly didn't rule it out.

There was, Delia had decided one evening, fretful in the tiny bedroom of her childhood, only one thing for it. She had to do something, to move beyond their current impasse. She hadn't been sure what, precisely, she would do but she knew she had to do something.

And so, she'd come back to London, full of excitement and fear and longing and wonder, only to find no sign of Patsy. Not that first evening back - there was no answer when she knocked at Patsy's door as she usually did for a chat lasting five minutes or an hour or all night. Not the next morning either - Patsy wasn't to be seen at breakfast, or lounging at the bottom of the stairs ready to walk with Delia to the ward. And then, as their shifts started, Patsy was uncharacteristically late, and when she did appear she refused to catch Delia's eye, leaving Delia with the troubling sensation that Patsy was trying to avoid her.

When she'd imagined their first conversation after she got back, Delia had thought she might not manage a grand declaration of love, but she hadn't thought it would go quite like this. She hadn't imagined having to work quite so hard to get Patsy to agree to come for a coffee with her after their shift. She hadn't imagined the awkwardness and angularity of the walk to the cafe that would follow that reluctant agreement. And she certainly hadn't imagined Patsy saying that she had been for a job interview in a florist's in Chelsea.

* * *

"I didn't get it," Patsy says again.

"But why, Pats?"

"I told you. They didn't think I had a delicate enough touch with the gladioli." Delia shakes her head crossly. Patsy knows that's not the question that was being asked.

Patsy could've kept this quiet: she didn't get the job, she's not leaving the ward, she's not leaving nursing, so there was no need to say anything. Anything at all. Patsy knows this is going to end in tears - Delia's, perhaps, her own, certainly, when she's alone and there's no-one around to see - and yet there's something driving her on.

"To get away from Mr Tracy?" Delia asks again. "I leave for a week and this is what happens? Honestly, Pats..." Delia's face does something between a grin and a grimace, battling disbelief, entertaining the hope that this is some whim, some mad plan and fearing that it's not. "Are you really that unhappy?" she says, quiet now.

Yes. Patsy wants to say. And no. She doesn't say anything.

"Nursing's all you ever wanted to do. You said."

Delia's trying to catch her eye; Patsy's trying her best to avoid the gaze that'll see right into her bones, right into her soul, all the way through her very being. She says nothing.

"Why, Pats? What's going on?"

Patsy risks a glance up at her, looks away. Looks into her coffee. Still can't speak.

"Pats, not...Pats, not to get away from _me?"_

"I didn't get it," Patsy says once more, as if that'll make a difference.

"But you wanted it?"

Patsy shrugs. She wants to say that she has no idea what she wanted last week or what she wants now, but it'll be a lie. She knows exactly what she wants. Who she wants. But she knows she can't have it, can't have her, so that's that.

"But _Chelsea?_ Half way across London?"

"It's not that far."

Delia looks at her in disbelief. Technically, no, it's not. But they both know that with the hours Delia works, if Patsy'd got the job she might as well be on the moon as be in Chelsea.


	2. A cosmonaut?

"A cosmonaut," Delia says.

"I didn't know you could speak Russian."

"I can speak Welsh," Delia retorts. "How hard can it be in comparison?"

"Delia. Be serious now."

"A parachutist, then."

"Why do all these jobs involve falling out of the sky?"

"There's nothing wrong with a bit of danger every now and again."

Patsy fears that were she to catch Delia's eye right at this moment, Delia would wink or otherwise find some way to convey that a whole world of hidden resonances can lie behind that statement, if only Patsy wants to acknowledge them. So Patsy doesn't catch her eye. Instead, she says, "Hmm."

Delia goes on with the game, allows Patsy to take the safe option. "A bus driver."

"No - you've no sense of direction."

"I have!"

"No. A tram driver'd be better. Less chance of getting lost."

"And you could be the bus conductor - "

" - Tram conductor," Patsy interrupts.

"You'd look quite - " Delia searches for the right word, "fetching, all buttoned up in the uniform and with a peaked cap."

Patsy, of course, thrills at the compliment but does her best to ignore it. "Doctor."

All of a sudden, Delia's wistful. "I did think about that, you know. When I was at school."

Now Patsy's no longer afraid to seek out Delia's gaze. "What happened?"

"You mean, why didn't I? Oh, you know, it's the way things go. Not the done thing. Mam had kittens enough when I said I was going to move here to be a nurse."

"A shame."

"Perhaps. Nursing's more humane than doctoring, I think. I can't imagine being anything else, now."

"Not a cosmonaut, or a parachutist, or a tram driver? - "

" - bus driver," Delia corrects her. "I can't imagine being anything other than a nurse, a bus driver, a parachutist or a cosmonaut."

"I'm really not sure about you being a cosmonaut..."

* * *

If you'd've asked Patsy a couple of hours ago how she thought this evening would end up, it would have been highly unlikely that her answer would have included sitting on her bed, drinking whiskey, eating cake and having a conversation about whether proficiency in the Welsh language made one suitable for the Russian space programme.

When she'd told Delia that she'd gone for an interview in a florist's in Chelsea, and Delia had stood up, thrust on her coat and started towards the door, Patsy'd been certain that she ruined the best friendship she had.

But Delia hadn't stormed off, had paused and had said, "Come on, Pats. We can't talk here." She'd gestured to the rest of the cafe, which was filling up with people, more than a few of them faces familiar from the hospital. "If one of us - you or probably me - is going to make a scene about this, it's perhaps best we don't do it in front of people we have to work with."

And so, Patsy had obediently put on her coat and followed Delia out of the door.

They'd walked in silence for five minutes or so, the dusk deepening into darkness, until Delia had finally spoken.

"Talk to me, Pats. What's going on with you?"

And Patsy, in broken sentences and with half a dozen false-starts, had tried to explain. About how fed up she had become of life on male surgical, how bored she was of of the same old routines, of the misogyny of the patients, of the chauvinism of the doctors, of the brutality of the surgeons. How she'd been so ready to quit so many times. But then how, ever since Delia'd been assigned there six months earlier, life on the ward had become more tolerable. Fun, even. More than fun. But how that made it worse, somehow, because it wasn't right that Delia was the only thing that made her job bearable. Because if Delia was the only reason she wanted to do the job then she couldn't do the job. Because she wasn't doing it for the right reasons.

"And so you want to give up the only job you've ever wanted to do - the job you've felt drawn to do - ever since you were a child?" Delia had said.

And at that Patsy had winced at the recollection, painful and tender, of a night surprisingly early in their friendship, in which she had laid bare the nightmare of her childhood memories and Delia had held her while she sobbed, and had sobbed for her.

And so Patsy had explained that no, of course the answer was not to become a florist, and that yes, nursing was the only thing that she wanted to do. And that yes, maybe she should have spoken to Delia about it but obviously she couldn't speak to Delia about it. So she hadn't. Until now.

Delia had sighed; if it weren't so dark, Patsy had suspected that she would have seen her roll her eyes. "There's more to nursing than male surgical, you know," Delia had said.

"I've already moved once. I don't want to be the one that flits about."

"Why not? Better that than be unhappy. You're only flitting because you're not settled. When you've worked out where you fit, you'll stay there. How did you even end up on male surgical anyway?"

"Because...because I did. It seemed...safe, somehow. Uncomplicated." Half a dozen meanings lay behind that, but Patsy hadn't wanted to unpack them then. Instead, she had said, "Anyway, after I'd been for the job interview at the florist's, I had an idea. When you were away, there was a girl - "

"Oh, yes?"

"The nurse who was here to replace you. Nurse Lee. I wonder..." In the doubtful gleam of the streetlight Delia's face had assumed a curious expression - intrigued? Piqued? Jealous, even? "There was a whole drama while you weren't here. Something between her and that boyish-looking one in bed two - the appendix case - "

"The one with the overbearing fiance?"

"The same."

"She doesn't like you. The fiance. She thinks you're too pretty to be around her James."

Patsy had snorted at that, at the thought that there could ever be anything between her and any of the patients on the ward. And knowing that, somehow, Delia knew that as well as she did herself had warmed her.

"She liked Jenny Lee even less. With reason, I suspect. Anyway, she was a midwife, in her usual job."

"The fiance?"

"The nurse. Nurse Lee."

"Midwifery?"

"I've never thought about it before, but yes. "

Delia had stopped then, and looked at her carefully, as if she were sizing up the idea alongside Patsy. Then she'd nodded. "Patsy Mount, Midwife. I like it."

And she'd threaded her arm through Patsy's, and led them in the direction of home.

They were turning into their street when, with her arm securely tucked through Delia's, Patsy had indulged a melodramatic thought. "When you stood up like that, back in the cafe, I thought you were going to leave and never talk to me again."

Delia had grinned. "I thought I might do that. For a moment or so. But then I didn't."

"I'm glad."

"So'm I."

And thus it was, over whiskey and cake in the little bedroom in the attic of the Nurses home that was Patsy's own domain, that a conversation about alternative careers had developed, and thus it was they jointly concluded that no job suited Delia quite as well as nursing did - well, almost none.

* * *

"A nun," Delia says.

"No," Patsy shudders, "anything but that."

"A librarian, then."

"Not that either. Both jobs require a vow of silence, more or less, and you couldn't do it."

"I could."

"No, you couldn't. But you could be a bartender," Patsy suggests, holding out the glass that's now empty.

Obligingly Delia pours Patsy's drink and her own. "That probably should be our last since you, my dear, have work in the morning."

"So, my dear, do you." The next day's a Sunday and there's no surgery scheduled, but it wouldn't do for either of them to be in too much of a state, just in case any emergencies come in. Patsy takes the bottle from Delia, holds it up to the light. "And because the bottle's empty."

"Well, because of that too."

They chink their glasses together.

"I don't think I'd like to be a bartender, though," Delia says. "Maybe a chef. No. I'd own a little bakery. It'd do cakes, and pastries, and bread. Pies. Welsh cakes. Bara brith."

Patsy looks towards the cabinet at the side of her bed, at the saucers with a few stray crumbs on them and the cake tin that was now much less heavy than it had been when Delia had brought it back with her from Wales. "Your mam's recipe?"

"Of course. If she'll let me."

"Busby's breadshop," Patsy grins. In her mind's eye, she can picture the shop and the neat display of cakes in its window, can see Delia behind the counter, presiding over shelves laden with loaves.

"Busby's bakery. And across the road," Delia continues, "there'd be another shop. For a long time after I open my shop it would be empty until suddenly one day the windows would be whitewashed and behind the cloudy glass, something would seem to be happening. After a week or so the windows would be cleaned again and behind them would be a new shop, a florist's. And there'd be this intriguing redhead who worked there, I think she'd probably be the owner. And soon after her shop opened I'd try to catch her attention - maybe I'd send some cakes, or some cream buns across the road to her, as a little welcoming present, but maybe that would become a kind of habit. Or not a habit as such, but a thing I liked to do because she liked cake and I liked her."

At some point in the telling of this story, Patsy's hand, which has been lingering on the counterpane within touching distance of Delia's, seems to make the decision for itself that it's been waiting far too long for Patsy to make and, after too many months of aching to do so, Patsy's fingers finally entwine themselves with Delia's. Her eyes, though, refuse to meet Delia's. Instead, they're concentrating steadfastly on the pattern of the bedspread.

"And would she send you flowers, do you think, the florist, as a thank-you present to start with, but maybe after that as a kind of habit - or not a habit as such, but as a thing she liked to do because you liked flowers and she liked you?"

"I don't know," Delia says, moving her head slightly so she can catch Patsy's eye. "Would she?"

There's a pause for a moment or two, and then it's as if Patsy's voice has got lost somewhere, so quiet it is when she speaks. "She would."

Delia grins, and without letting go of Patsy's gaze, raises their joined hands to her lips, and gently kisses Patsy's knuckles.

* * *

It's like Jimmy's woken up on a different planet, or on a different ward, at least. Maybe it's the effect of the drugs changing how he perceives things. Maybe the sedative he had after the operation had dulled his senses. But even so, he could have sworn that yesterday the tall, blonde, efficient nurse didn't get on with the shorter, dark-haired one with the distinctive accent who seems to have replaced Jenny. Didn't get on with her at all. A brittle, snippy, awkward tension had crackled through the ward all day. But then today, suddenly everything's sunshine and rainbows. And cream cakes. Literally cream cakes. The Welsh one - Nurse Busby, was it? - has brought in cream buns, which the pair of them have covertly eaten behind the nurse's desk. And then the blonde one rather bashfully (Jimmy 's not sure that's the right word to apply to a woman, really, but he can't come up with a better one to describe her action) has plucked a flower out of the vase that's on the edge of the desk, and presented it to the other nurse.

Women are a mystery, Jimmy thinks.

He turns over in a huff. He's hungry. Were he to take the time to consider it, he might welcome the return of his appetite as a sign that he's getting better. Right now, though, he can't think about that. All he can think about is how much he wants a cream bun.


End file.
